Eureka!

My new workplace is very serious about its employees' welfare (just like any other organisation out there ;). Last Friday we got free tickets to the Eureka tower - the tallest residential building in the southern Hemisphere. Its observation deck is in fact a quite lame tourist attraction (luckily, a free bar was sceduled for later), But we've hit the top floor when the sun was about to go down - nice photo op of the sunset and Melbourne's CBD (central business district).

On the observation deck there's an outdoors cage in which, if you can stand the winds at 300 m altitudes, you can have a fairly impressive view of the CBD (and, as marked by the arrow, my personal rat's hole...). Honestly, I don't see any outside to this cage...

Prom Night

Here we've dressed up so you all can see what's the dress code around our apartment, even for the simplest tasks. The truth is that there aren't many pictures of us together so this opportunity was as good as any. The set design is Liat's - she's really good, ain't she?!

New Urbanism

The previous post was a nice segue to some urban shots I've taken in different occasions but haven't posted yet. These are from a Lygon St. - normally an overcrowded, commercialised street, but on this occasion a perfect backdrop for some young skaters.





















































And some grungy shots of the grungy Fitzroy - a very trendy inner city suburb...



































































This would definitely be the cover to my book about nature in the city...

The easy way to be culturally creative

Those of you who know me well enough know that every now and then I can get really excited about something that most people would consider to be a boring social sciences' jargon. I've been reading this book about authenticity (BTW, I've read better ones) in which the author discusses the preferences of a new social class - known as the creative class - and its implications on everything around us, from culture to economics to urban structure and so on. It really made me think (!) about how it's all sounds very different from whatever it is you would believe if your only source of information was TV/Newspapers. Luckily for me, in Melbourne you don't have to go very far to explore this class's environment. Most of them are inner city dwellers - just like us!

So I grabbed the camera kit and went on a cultural expedition. I really like the fact that the streets here are literally paved with whatever on people's minds - that's pure democracy to me. I hope that most of these pictures speak for themselves, even if they aren't really technically impressive.

Melbourne Jazz Festival

So the Melbourne Jazz Festival is in town and as usual a lot of it takes place outdoors for free. We went to hear this band (they were more Soul than Jazz, which is good) but immediately realised that the real show was this gentleman who proved that age shouldn't stop anyone from having fun... We later learned that he was also nearly blind (holding a cane) which didn't stop him either. What an inspiration...
























































And, of course, when you think you're young it's only a matter of time before others start believing in it too...








































so even the youngest are infected with your joy...